Philadelphia Art News Blog by DoN Brewer

Category Archives: Wood

As By Digging, Jaime Alvarez, Olivia Jia, Michelle Marcuse

InLiquid @ The Painted Bride

As By Digging features three artists—Jaime Alvarez, Olivia Jia, Michelle Marcuse—working in distinct media, whose works suggest an archaeological position to their subjects. Materials are used to draw out contradictions in our relationships to things and spaces with unclear origins: Photographs pronounce their subject with a different accent; paintings reflect on tangible objects without pointing us in the direction of where exactly we are; cardboard is put together to seem like lumbering parts reclaimed from a shipwreck. Split personalities can be sensed in the work, and each of the artists use their medium to collapse the distance between what we expect something to be and our fantasies of how it actually performs. The Indiana Jones franchise is a useful comparison in popular culture, in which the medium of film is a bridge between an intellectual’s quiet scholarly pursuit and their alter ego’s perilous adventure.

In contrast to an action movie, the excavations here unfold more quietly and without black and white good and bad guys. Jaime Alvarez’s photographs of small, synthetic figurines appear giant and alive; Michelle Marcuse’s bits of cardboard and glue take on machinic obscurity; Olivia Jia manipulates paint illusionistically in an idiosyncratic approach to cataloging personal documents and art history fragments. Amidst these approaches, we become conscious of our connection to a vast lineage of human remains, and the strange moment when our distance to these emergent totems is both closed and accentuated.

Jaime Alvarez’s work introduces us to some of the fundamental poles of the photographic medium. His large prints of uniformly painted figurines, trinkets, and other left-behinds, in either jet black or white, offer a sumptuous version of familiar things while they remain at the distance imposed by their singularity and iconized stature. Amidst these delectable yet cold memento mori, there appear straightly documented rooms of an empty, crumbling home. In their quiet, irreversible decay, we find we can pay attention.

Olivia Jia calls on the sleight of hand in painting to place us into an object’s space. Curious specificity meets ambivalent setting. Busts of classical, familiar statues are captured in a moment of focus, and provide little context for their inner fracturing. Fragments of personal ephemera, art historical reproductions, and more abstracted yet referential piles of historic matter are similarly reverent yet concise in what they appear to describe.

In the cardboard and glue sculptures of Michelle Marcuse, we encounter flexible understandings of reverence and delicateness. That which is flimsy is not necessarily weak; lightness in weight is not bound to a lightness in being. Her objects, while small in stature, imply something grand, aged and important, and indeed heavy. Each one is a space that is found out, by a process of physical conflicts and resolutions with the material. We come to detect them, not by a definitive allegation from their author about their personalities, but by the clear relationship between the object and the hands constructing it.

David Gerbstadt, Artist Shopping for a New Art Gallery

Artist and author David Gerbstadt of Berwyn, Pennsylvania is shopping for a new art gallery to handle his artwork as a stable artist. David has been in galleries, solo, and group shows worldwide since 1993. Now in over 15 countries and most of the United States.

“My vocabulary is full of creatures – both real and imagined.I often incorporate words phrases and doodles into my paintings.I recycle materials found on the street that become part of and inspire my work.

“After my near death experience on December, 28 2007 my life changed.My hospital chart read, man on bicycle vs. 14 wheeled tracker trailer truck.The doctor’s told me they don’t know why I am here but I am. I believe I was spared to continue to make art, make people happy, and to let people know they are loved.Since then life has been a consent struggle.I get through the day with my doctors, art, friends, and my three legged rescue dog Noel.”

The Center displays wood art on site and in traveling exhibitions. Our Windgate ITE International Residency Program has involved over 100 international residents as it continues through its third decade. Education and community outreach programs bring hands-on wood turning and woodworking experience to students throughout the region. The Museum Collection contains over 1000 objects from around the world, ranging from functional, every-day objects to contemporary sculptures. Our research library consists of over 25,000 images, artists’ files, and books that help preserve the exciting history of wood turning and woodworking and their continuing evolution as a contemporary art form.

Over the last two years, the Center mounted 15 exhibitions which served as the central programming focus during the time of their presentation. For instance, the Center publishes catalogues and books around many exhibitions and offers special events and dinners that correspond with each show. The Center comes alive during Old City District‘s notable First Fridays, which are the perfect opportunity for exhibition openings and events.” – The Center for Art in Wood

“German craftsman Jakob Weissflog just won the first Bob Stocksdale International Excellence in Wood Award. He learned woodturning from his father Hans Weissflog. Both are world class artists in wood.” – John Thornton

“Jakob Weissflog, Germany, is the inaugural honoree recipient of the Bob Stocksdale International Excellence in Wood Award.

Supported by an anonymous donor, the Bob Stocksdale International Excellence in Wood Award annually grants $1,000 and a documented exhibition to an emerging or mid-career artist whose work, like Stocksdale’s, unites quality of craftsmanship and respect for materials.

“Bob Stocksdale (born 1913 in Warren, Indiana—died January 6, 2003 in Oakland, California) was an American woodturner, known for his bowls formed from rare and exotic woods. He was raised on his family farmand enjoyed working with tools. His wife of more than 30 years, Kay Sekimachi, stated that, “His grandfather gave him a pocketknife, and he started to whittle. That’s how it started.”

According to an oral history he recorded at the University of CaliforniaBancroft Library, Stocksdale powered his first lathe with a surplus Maytag gasoline washing machine motor. He turned baseball bats and spindles among early projects. After graduating from high school, he worked in a factory making wooden paddles used by cracker bakers. Later he worked in a factory that made cedar chests. His job was to assemble the chests from the pre-cut wooden pieces.

He was drafted into the Army in 1942. Like two of his three brothers, he claimed conscientious objector (CO) status during World War II because he believed war never solved anything. He spent World War II in several CO camps doing forestry work. It was at a camp in Michigan where Stocksdale turned his first bowl on a lathe.This brought him to the West. He was encouraged in his woodturning efforts by Helen Winnemore, the owner of a crafts gallery in Columbus, Ohio.

After the war, Stocksdale moved to Berkeley, California in 1946, one year after Gump’s in San Francisco began showing his work. His first solo exhibition followed in 1958 at the Long Beach Museum of Art. He bought a Victorian duplex in South Berkeley, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life. He put together a shop of modest tools in his basement, and there turned out work for more than 50 years that gradually earned him acclaim and fame as a woodturner. He was a friend, and sometime collaborator, of Sam Maloof.

His work was included in the American exhibit of the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair and has been recognized internationally for fine design and workmanship. His many honors include the American Association of Woodturners Lifetime Achievement Award (1998) and the Masters of the Medium Award, James Renwick Alliance (2003). Stocksdale received the American Craft Council’s Gold Medal in 1995.

Stocksdale died on the January 6, 2003, at Kaiser Oakland Medical Center in Oakland, California from complications of prostate cancer. He was 89. He was survived by second wife, Kay Sekimachi, a famous weaver and craft artist; a daughter, Joy, a noted fabric designer,of Sebastopol, California; a son, Kim, of Los Angeles; and a sister-in-law, Marge Stocksdale of Huntington, Indiana.” – Wikipedia

Media Arts Council – What does M.A.C. really do? Our work is organized into several committees made up of dedicated volunteers who bring their skills and enthusiasm to their teams. We have a lot on our plates, but recognize that we’re in it for the camaraderie too. We’re always looking for new volunteers, so please let us know if you’re interested in learning more about our committees.